Dance of Shadows (36 page)

She stepped toward them, trying not to look at the dark slump of Josef’s body at the edge of the room. Hilda picked up his staff and prepared to tap out the time. There was no music, there never had been in the afternoon practices. Only the arrhythmic beat. The sound of the staff startled Vanessa; made
her think, just for a moment, that Josef had come back to life. Shaking it off, she put on the shoes and tied the ribbons around her ankles.

“Positions!” Hilda shouted, a new, pleased edge to her voice.

Vanessa turned to Anna and the other princesses, who were gathered by the far wall, crying, covering their faces. Anna’s pretty face was streaked with makeup, yet somehow it looked more real, more sincere than Vanessa had ever seen it. And even though they had never spoken a kind word to each other, or even a neutral hello, Vanessa realized now that they had always been on the same side.

“Please,” Vanessa pleaded. “I have to do this for my sister.”

Anna studied Vanessa, her gaze skeptical. “What if you can’t finish it?”

“I can,” Vanessa said, trying to sound confident. “I know I can.”

Finally, Anna gave her a stiff nod. “I hope you’re right,” she said, before turning to the other dancers.

The spotlight shone over Vanessa as she took her place on the circle of ash, her shadow stretching across the floor.
I’m sorry
, she mouthed to Steffie, Blaine, and TJ, hoping that they would somehow understand her.

Following Anna’s lead, the thirteen princesses gathered around her in a pale circle. Weaving between them, Zep emerged from the shadows and took his place by her side. Vanessa felt his eyes on her, begging her to look at him, to forgive him. But she couldn’t.

“Remember,” he whispered, with the soft voice that had
made her melt the first time they danced together. “Don’t think about it.
Feel
it.”

She closed her eyes, shutting out the room. She pointed her toe, bowed her head, and waited until she heard the first tap. Taking a breath, she began to dance.

Grace.

After everything else burned away, that’s all that was left.

That, and the memory of Margaret.

As Vanessa danced, her body moved differently than it ever had before. Her steps were softer, her leaps broader, and her arms fluttered so delicately that it felt as if her sister had returned and was guiding her.

Hilda stood at the edge of the room, tapping out the irregular beat, and the ballerinas sinuously braided themselves around Vanessa, their white faces expressionless, as if their features had been painted on. Zep moved silently beside her, his dark body acting as her shadow.

Her feet found all the right steps until Vanessa leaped toward the edge of the room. She arched her neck back, her ankles wobbled—

“Steady!” Hilda warned.

Vanessa twirled away, catching herself before she fell out of place, and the dance continued.

But a glimpse of Josef’s limp body shook her. She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out, but she could feel his presence on the floor. Hilda tapped out the beat, Josef’s staff pounding against the wood like an erratic heartbeat. Vanessa heard a whimper from Blaine. What would happen to her friends if she failed? If she couldn’t control the demon?

“Careful!” Hilda cautioned again, her voice growing nervous.

Zep spun toward her, sliding his hand down Vanessa’s spine. He gripped her waist, preparing for her lift, but she resisted. She didn’t want him to touch her. Suddenly, her body felt heavy and slow. She leaned away from him, trying to free herself from his grip, when she heard a whisper.

“Stop it,” Zep said in her ear. He pulled her back before she could make an error. “Stop thinking about me. Stop thinking about them. Stop
thinking
at all.” His sweat smelled sharp in her nostrils. She wanted to cringe but didn’t.

“If you want to help your sister, you have to clear your mind.” He arched Vanessa back and forced her to look at him. The light glinted off his eyes, making them appear glassy. “Do you understand?”

Behind him, the white figure that resembled Margaret was frozen into the wall, preserved in time like the secret diary. If Vanessa didn’t do anything, she would be stuck there forever.

She didn’t need to answer him. Instead, she closed her eyes,
and, pushing everything out of her mind, she raised herself
en pointe
and prepared for the lift.

Hilda held the staff like a conductor, and Vanessa followed her instructions, feeling herself pushed back, then reeled in; smoothing out her long, extended leg, and curling her spine upward. When the rhythm changed, she shifted with it, her body slowing.

She was barely aware when Zep drifted away, backing into the shadows, his role over. Her chest heaved. Everything in the room went dull and blurred, and then suddenly a burst of color shocked her eyes. She squinted from the glare but kept dancing as the room grew brighter, redder, the colors saturating into a surreal prism of light.

“Good,” Hilda whispered. As the ballerinas spun past Vanessa, the floor beneath their toes began to ripple, carrying them with it.

Vanessa quickened her pace, forcing her body left, then right. This time she didn’t fight it. She allowed herself to stagger with the beat, feeling her satin pointe shoes sliding against the polished wood.

A smoldering smell floated through the air, and the paint began to curl. The glowing white figures peeled their bodies off the wall and twirled toward Vanessa, mimicking her motions and forming a luminous circle around the living ballerinas.

No one else reacted to them. The other girls kept dancing, their faces expressionless, while the radiant figures wove around them in bursts of light.

I’m the only one who can see them
, Vanessa realized.

Pulling her eyes away, Vanessa gazed up into the blinding glare of the spotlight, letting its warmth envelop her. Sweat trickled down her neck and into the thin fabric of her leotard. She tilted her head back and raised her arms, reaching into the light, when she felt a new sensation.

It started as a tingling, a steamy warmth on the back of her neck. She shivered as it traveled down her spine, seeping into her skin and filling her with heat. Except it wasn’t heat, exactly—or at least not the kind she knew.

It felt like a surge of life. Of something thick and lush and foreign. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, everything around her was moving in slow motion.

She could see the dust particles hanging in the air, the light reflecting off them as if they were bits of gold.

She could feel the air shifting and see the light bending around the circle of ballerinas.

She could hear Hilda tapping the beat, though it sounded simple and flat, and she wondered why she ever had trouble with it in the first place.

Vanessa flitted through the room like a warm breeze, her body weightless, a shell. She wasn’t just going through the motions of the dance, she was becoming it. The rhythm pulsed through her, and Vanessa knew that with this strange charge of life inside her, she could do anything. Her body wasn’t a limitation anymore. She could peel it off and it wouldn’t matter.

Her chest swelled, the leotard tight around her ribs. A strong, invisible force pressed against her back, straightening her spine. The ribbons cut into her ankles, and she felt the
bones in her toes grow fragile, as if they might shatter beneath her weight. But she didn’t step out of place. She wanted to feel this new life grip her, take control of her body, and teach her to move through space and time like she was always meant to.

Her body was brittle now, as elegant as glass. Her lips parted and a thin string of air entered her. Her mouth moved without her, her throat constricting and her tongue growing parched as she felt herself whisper a jumble of sounds.

They weren’t English, exactly, or any language—just a mixture of sounds that suddenly made sense:
Who am I?
Even though the words had come from her, the voice didn’t belong to Vanessa. It was deep and impossibly rich, like the color of a clear winter night.

Vanessa closed her eyes and let its life seep through her.
This is who I am
, she answered.

She trembled, extending her hands above her head while the presence prickled her fingertips, feeling her, knowing her for the first time. But then something odd happened.

It took hold of her limbs and tossed her body to the side.

It was angry.

Vanessa was barely able to keep balance as she landed, still in position, before it tossed her again, the demon’s wrath surging through her. Suddenly she realized that it didn’t want to be called forth at all.

Vanessa’s vision clouded, and her mind pulsed with darkness as the demon tried to rip itself from her. Hilda’s tapping grew more distant. She blinked, trying to regain control, when she noticed a luminous figure flitting on the periphery. “Margaret?” she whispered in her own voice. “Margaret?”

She grew stronger as she said it, the room coming back into focus. She forced her legs into position, pointed her toe, and lifted herself in a triumphant relevé.

She felt a force move up her spine. It arched her back, making her bones creak as she bent forward into a low bow.

She heaved, and her mouth began to move again.
Why have you called me forth?
it asked her in a deep voice. Her vocal cords hurt with each weirdly pronounced word.

Vanessa lowered herself to the floor.
I want to know what you know
, she answered.

What I know?
it said, the voice of the demon choking her throat.
What I know, you do not want to know
.

She rolled herself upward, letting the spotlight kiss her cheeks.
I do
, she answered back.
I MUST. There is one I seek
.

Her mouth parted and the demon spoke again.
Only if you set me free
.

Vanessa paused, almost missing a beat. Set it free?

If you set me free I will show you. I will help you. Whatever you seek we can find
. Her fingers curled outward, beckoning her to accept the offer.

Vanessa let her leg slide behind her in an elegant curtsy.
I accept
.

A rift grew inside her, long and jagged, but Vanessa didn’t stop dancing. She raised her head up to the spotlight, turning, pirouetting, waiting. A searing force tore its way through her. Her knees bent back. Her neck cracked left, then right. Her arms snapped into place over her head, getting ready for a final sequence of steps, when the door to the studio burst open.

A shadow forced itself into the room, like a person she once knew. Justin? Was that his name? She couldn’t remember. Two others piled in behind him, large and identical. Twins. Fratelli. They seemed like they were in a rush.

It all happened in a haze, the room watery and slow around her.

From the corner of her eye, Vanessa saw lips move on one of the ballerinas. “Finally!” the girl said, forming each sound slowly. Anna. Her powdered face twisted, as if she were trying to run toward them but she couldn’t. Something larger was at work now. “You have to stop her,” Anna said, just before she twirled away, unable to break free from the dance.

Don’t worry
, Vanessa wanted to tell them.
I’ve made a deal with it
. But she was ripped away into a scatter of steps. She was leaving this world now, floating while everything around her remained slow and distorted, as if the only time that mattered was the pace of her steps.

In the distance, she could see Justin move toward the circle of ballerinas, the twins looming behind him. His dark eyes fixed on Vanessa, and for a moment she remembered him—the sound of his voice, the smell of his cologne, the sharpness of his hair across his face as he stood in her doorway late at night. But as quickly as the memories came, they vanished, and her head was filled with bright flashes that stunned her and then faded away, like embers burning to ash. The demon had taken over.

Justin must have noticed, because he stopped in his tracks and studied her, tilting his head to get a better look. Suddenly, he held up a broad hand and said something in another
language. Vanessa didn’t understand it, but something inside her did.

The force inside her flinched, as if their words had wounded it.

The voice fractured, a jumble of whispers crowded her head, and for the briefest of moments she regained herself.

Justin was standing across the room, his hand held up. She extended her arm toward him, meeting his gaze.
Justin
, her eyes pleaded.
Help me
.

He must have understood. “Vanessa,” he cried. And in that split second, he lost whatever control he’d had over the demon.

Vanessa’s eyes blurred, and somewhere within her, the fractured voices joined together again as one and said,
Yesssssss
.

Hilda stepped in front of him. She raised Josef’s staff in the air, as if she were going to swing it at Justin, when Anna shouted, “No!”

Anguish clear on her face, Anna willed her legs out of position.

Immediately, Hilda spun with the staff and knocked Anna back in line. Anna’s knees straightened and her face grew smooth, and she was back under a trance again, her cheeks white as a porcelain doll, her red lips pursed.

Hilda spoke, her voice cutting through the room. “You?” She pointed to Justin and the twins with her staff. “I thought you were too young and stupid to learn any functional magic.” She shook her head and turned to the frozen circle of ballerinas. “But it doesn’t matter. You’re too late; we have brought forth
our Guest. You’ve all betrayed me,” Hilda said in a low growl. “And you will suffer for it. Spirit! What is your name?”

Werzelya
sounded in the room, reverberating in the floor and air and their very bones.

“Werzelya, I command you. Enter your host,” Hilda said as she began to beat her staff once more.

Vanessa could see the yellow stains on Hilda’s teeth as she said it over and over. And even though Hilda’s voice grew quieter, Vanessa could hear the words in her mind.
Enter her
. It started as a whisper, growing louder until Vanessa’s head began to pound.